‘No hammer fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung,
Majestic silence!’”[221]
In connection with this literary and social side of the College may be mentioned the Phœnix Common-room or Club, the only social Club in the University which is more than a century old. It was started in 1781 or 1782 by Joseph Alderson, an undergraduate of Brasenose, afterwards Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and received a full constitution with officers and rules in 1786. It has always nominally consisted of twelve members, generally dining together once a week. The records of the Club are singularly complete, even to the caricatures on the blotting-paper of the dinner-books. Of the twelve original members five were soon elected to Fellowships, and such names as Frodsham Hodson (afterwards Principal), Viscount Valentia (d. 1844), Earl Fortescue (d. 1861), Reginald Heber (Bishop of Calcutta), Lord George Grenville (d. 1850), the Earl of Delawarr, the friend of Byron, Richard Harington (afterwards Principal), Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne (“S. G. O.”), and the present Deans of Rochester and Worcester, have raised it to no ordinary level. Its contemporary from 1828 to 1834, the Hell-fire Club, was of a very different character; but from one or two dubious incidents in its career has found its way into literature.[222] The incident which produced from the pen of Reginald Heber the humorous poem entitled the Whippiad[223] was connected with members of the Phœnix, though not with a meeting of the Club. The Senior Tutor had incautiously endeavoured to wrest a whip from Bernard Port, who had been loudly cracking it in the quadrangle; but alas, the representative of constitutional authority soon measured his length on the grass, being, not for the first time (as Heber maliciously notes) “floored by Port.”
The Ale Verses were an ancient social custom, probably at least as old as the Restoration. On Shrove Tuesday the butler presented a copy of English verses on Brasenose Ale to the Principal, written by some undergraduate, and received thereupon a certain sum of money. The earliest extant poem is of about the year 1700; but there is a long gap from that year till 1806, and they are not continuously preserved till from 1826, having been printed first in about 1811. They supply all kinds of contemporary information, collegiate, academical and political, chiefly of course by way of allusion. At last in 1886 the College Brew-house was removed to make room for new buildings, and with it went the Ale Verses, except that in 1889 one more set was issued. In 1888 a Fellow of the College printed a Latin dirge over the sad surcease; but soon the Verses will be forgotten, and the Brew-house.
On the river Brasenose has always been prominent: never once in the Eights or Torpids has it sunk below the ninth place. In the first inter-collegiate races, in 1815, Brasenose is at the head, and when the records begin again, in 1822, again takes the lead. At the present time (June 1891) B.N.C. has started head in the Eights on 110 days.[224]
The only clubs which had cricket grounds of their own in about 1835 were the Brasenose and the Bullingdon (Ch. Ch.), and even in 1847 the Magdalen, i. e. the University Club, was the only additional one. Early cricketing records are difficult to find; but in recent times no College has been able to show such a record as B.N.C. in 1871, when it had eight men in the University eleven, and when sixteen of the College beat an All-England eleven. In 1873 sixteen of B.N.C. also beat the United North of England eleven. The Inter-University high-jump of 1876, when M. J. Brooks of B.N.C. cleared 6 feet 2½ inches, was an extraordinary performance.
The characteristics of the College at all times have been remarkably similar and persistent, if the present writer can trust his judgment. They may be described as, first and foremost, a marked but not exclusive predilection for the exercises and amusements of out-door life, the result of sound bodies and minds, and in part, no doubt, of a long connection with old county families of a high type. And next a certain pertinacity, perseverance, power of endurance, doggedness, patriotism, solidarity, or by whatever other name the spirit may be called which leads men to do what they are doing with all their might, to undergo training and discipline for the sake of the College, and hang together like a cluster of bees in view of a common object. The Headship of the River for any length of time cannot possibly be obtained by fitful effort, or the unsustained enthusiasm of a single leader; but rather (and herein consists its value) by a continuous, often unconsciously continuous, effort of several years, backed up by the general support of the College. Lastly, Brasenose seems to be singularly central, intermediate, and in a good sense average and mediocre. Its position and buildings, its history, its achievements, the roll of Brasenose authors, all give evidence that the College is a good sample of the best sort of academical foundation. A writer who might wish to select a single College for study as a specimen of the kind, would find the history of Brasenose neither startling nor commonplace, neither eccentric nor uninteresting, neither full of strong contrasts nor deficient in the signs of healthy corporate life.